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Precious little info out there that I've been able to find, but as near as I can tell this organization is not a charity as defined under the laws of the UK (Charities Act 2006), and would not be subject to any reporting/oversight that is typically required of a bona fide UK charity. While they appear to have set up some corporate governance with input from their participating charitable organizations, Charity Engine is a for profit organization.

Their business model goes something like this:

Leveraging the BOINC platform, entice people to join a network by offering cash lottery prizes Sell the network's computing power at a price that undercuts all currently available commercial services Pay the participating charities a 50% cut of the commercial sales Pay a lottery winner(s) 42% of the commercial salesCharity Engine keeps 8%

Charity Engine obtained VC funding, so they must believe that their 8% cut will generate enough cash for VC-level returns to their angel investors.

I gleaned the above info mostly from here and a forum thread where the Charity Engine CEO (Mark McAndrew) appears to have made a few posts - including this one.